Technical Abstract:
Lignocellulosic biomass, upon pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis, generates a mixture of hexose and pentose sugars such as glucose, xylose, arabinose and galactose. Escherichia coli utilizes all these sugars well but it lacks the ability to produce ethanol from them. Recombinant ethanologenic E. coli strains were created with a goal to produce ethanol from both hexose and pentose sugars. In this paper, literature available on the production of ethanol from lignocellulosic hydrolyzates by an ethanologenic recombinant E. coli strain (FBR5) is reviewed. The bacterium is stable without antibiotics and can tolerate ethanol up to 50 g L^-1^. It produces up to 45 g ethanol per L. It has the potential to be used for industrial production of ethanol from lignocellulosic hydrolyzates.